If you're not fluent in Japanese it's not advisable to play the Layton games. Some puzzles are language neutral, but some are heavily dependent on Japanese or even odd puns that depend on Japanese-English language conversions. Even I have problems with some puzzles.

By the way, I and one other person have been working with the writer of these Professor Layton walkthroughs to translate dialogue and puzzles, feel free to check them out. I'm helping her translate Majin no Fue so the walkthrough will be out long before it even comes out in the US.

has anyone got this working? unfortunately, i'm at work, so cant test, i have acekard2, and cyclod......
can anyone confirm yes or no, so i can start doing some research if it doesnt work while i'm here at work

So I found some sort of patch by Rudolph here, but it's password-protected. I honestly don't even know what this "child's play" patch does or if it will even work, but I'm curious. There's a hint in the included text file as to what the password is:

Quoted from QUOTE:

If you purchased the game of "Mario & Sonic at Vancouver Olympic", you can find the password.

See page 3 of the manual, and check the row of 7, then you can imaginate some character.
The full name of the character is just password!!

I haven't had any luck with the names I've tried so far. I'm wondering what the hell "you can imaginate some character" means. Maybe a character not pictured in the instruction manual, that you have to "imaginate" yourself?